RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Mi­grant women con­tin­ue to face chal­lenges in T&T, and as the coun­try marked In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, Chris­tine Boodoo and the Liv­ing Evo­lu­tion Char­i­ty Foun­da­tion do­nat­ed 45 food ham­pers to sup­port strug­gling mi­grant fam­i­lies.

The ham­pers were de­liv­ered to Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, co­or­di­na­tor of the La Ro­main Mi­grant Sup­port Group, who has been as­sist­ing mi­grant fam­i­lies since 2019.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Boodoo said the ham­per dri­ve has been on­go­ing across the coun­try, even though the foun­da­tion is based in Cen­tral.

“We do 50 ham­pers, cloth­ing, food­stuff every month. We do sta­tionery dri­ves and back-to-school dri­ves. We try to help as many peo­ple as we can,” Boodoo said.

How­ev­er, she not­ed that fi­nan­cial con­straints of­ten lim­it their ef­forts. “Lots of times we are un­able to do as much as we like due to lack of fund­ing, so most times it comes out of our own pock­ets. I would nev­er want to see a child go hun­gry,” Boodoo said.

She not­ed that the ris­ing cost of liv­ing has made it hard­er for fam­i­lies to sur­vive.

“We are see­ing lots of un­em­ploy­ment right now. Many peo­ple have lost their jobs, and the price of food has gone up. What we did a year ago for a fam­i­ly of six in terms of cost, we can’t do again. We will have to pay more be­cause every­thing has gone up. The cost of liv­ing has gone up.”

She em­pha­sised that the foun­da­tion helps peo­ple re­gard­less of back­ground.

“We go wher­ev­er and help who­ev­er we can. Some of us mi­grat­ed and were in this sit­u­a­tion, so why not re­turn the help to our lo­cal mi­grants? They are hu­mans too, every­one is look­ing for a bet­ter way of life,” Boodoo said.

She urged women to sup­port each oth­er.

“I wish that women help women. Some women be­lit­tle and look down on oth­ers, but we are all women, equal. Jobs don’t des­ig­nate us, and sta­tus doesn’t sep­a­rate us. We should be there for one an­oth­er.”

Ram­nar­ine said her or­gan­i­sa­tion has cut its mi­grant ham­per dri­ve be­cause of fi­nan­cial strug­gles.

“We used to sup­port about 100 mi­grant fam­i­lies but now we do just about 30 fam­i­lies,” she said.

She not­ed that mi­grant women con­tin­ue to face se­ri­ous chal­lenges not­ing that ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion was lim­it­ed to a few.

“That’s why the La Ro­main Mi­grant Sup­port Group has shift­ed its fo­cus to ed­u­ca­tion. This year, we couldn’t con­tin­ue the food dis­tri­b­u­tion, so we nar­rowed it down to fo­cus on chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion. Too many of these chil­dren can­not get in­to es­tab­lished schools and do not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty for green­er pas­tures,” Ram­nar­ine said.

She not­ed there are 43 chil­dren en­rolled at the LARM’s school held at the La Ro­maine RC Church.

Ram­nar­ine al­so said that some mi­grants left T&T to go to the Unit­ed States be­fore the elec­tion.

Ram­nar­ine not­ed that the sup­port from the Liv­ing Evo­lu­tion Char­i­ty Foun­da­tion was time­ly.

“It is so nice that we have a day to rec­og­nize the worth of women and their con­tri­bu­tion to so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing all our mi­grant women,” she added.

Any­one want­i­ng to con­tact the Liv­ing Evo­lu­tion Char­i­ty Foun­da­tion can call Boodoo at 324-7696.